Notes From The Landscape: Breathtaking Queen Anne`s Lace And Chicory

August 04, 1985|By Art Kozelka.

Each summer about this time, two plants familiar to everyone flourish with abandon along the wayside, flaunting charming white and blue blossoms. Although neither is native to North America, both plants thrive in such profusion that they are commonly referred to as weeds, which indeed they can become in some places.

The plants are Queen Anne`s lace and chicory. In cultivated farm fields and even in home gardens, both can prove a real nuisance, quickly overtaking other desirable plants with their spreading, invasive habit. But when naturalized in masses along roadsides, open fields, or railroad rights of way, often growing side by side, they are a breathtaking part of the passing landscape.

Queen Anne`s lace, a Eurasian herb, has conspicuously large, flattened clusters of lacy white flowers that hold their heads high on plants with finely cut foliage. Their hollow stems readily take up vegetable coloring matter if other than white hues are desired for arrangements. The frilly flowers also can be dried for winter bouquets.

A close kin of the garden carrot, Queen Anne`s lace (Daucus carota) is sometimes called ``wild carrot,`` as well as bird`s nest flower, the latter because of the way the flower clusters knit together and assume the shape of a cup as they go to seed.

Chicory, the other roadside charmer, is a tall growing European herb

(Cichorium intybus) with composite sky-blue flowers that emerge all along its stiff, spindly stems. It often can be seen growing and flowering so abundantly that a field of them appears to be covered with a blue hue. As with Queen Anne`s lace, you may find a chicory-related variety growing in the vegetable garden. It is called endive.

One of the more exciting facets of outdoor--and indoor--gardening is growing plants by means other than seeds. Almost every gardener tries it occasionally, if only as casually as pushing a stem into moist soil and hoping it somehow will make roots and grow into a new plant.

And quite surprisingly, with nature cooperating, this simple gesture often does produce new plants.

What we are talking about, of course, is only one--perhaps the simplest if not also most haphazard--kind of seedless propagation. Professional growers and nurserymen practice it, but employ more sophisticated techniques to assure a dependable, higher ratio of success.

But the home gardener desirous of increasing his supply of plants also can utilize more dependable methods. Try them on some favorite subjects and you will find the experience a rewarding one. There is always something special about a plant you started yourself.

One method that yields almost certain results is called layering. Most woody plants with long, flexible canes or shoots, such as forsythia, viburnum, cotoneaster, clematis and climbing roses, will reproduce easily by this method.

To start new plants this way, bend the shoots or canes into a U about 8 to 10 inches from the tip, make a slight open wound with a knife at the bend, then insert the bent portion into a hole in the ground about 2 inches deep. Fill the hole with porous soil containing a generous amount of peat moss and mound the mixture to about an inch or two above the ground level.

It is essential that the buried portion of the stem remain undisturbed. To make sure it does, you can anchor it with a clothespin, or coat hanger wire, and use bricks or stones to weight down either side of the stem or cane. The buried portion must be kept moist at all times.

With most plants handled this way, the buried stem portion, which is nourished by the parent plant, will develop roots by fall. Others, depending on variety, may take until spring. Once rooted, a new plant can be severed from the parent plant and placed where you want it to continue growing.

Where canes or stems are very long, you can root several new plants at one time by dipping bent portions into the soil at 1 or 2 foot intervals. This is known as serpentine layering and is often done to extend plantings, such as clematis, along a fence line.

To propagate house plants for the coming indoor season, take soft, green stemmed cuttings of them now. These will make larger plants for a better display indoors than if you wait until next month to root the cuttings. By then the growing cycle will have slowed down considerably.

Cuttings can be taken from such plants as wax begonias, coleus, impatiens, geraniums and foliage and vining specimens. Snip off the tip of soft, green growth about 5 inches in length, remove the lower leaves, and make a clean cut with a razor just below the bottom node (leaf joint).

Dip the cut ends in a rooting hormone which you can get at any garden store, and place the cuttings in pots or flats of soil or expandable peat pots (Jiffy 7`s). Insert the cuttings so that two nodes are in the rooting medium, which should be kept moist, but not soggy, at all times. Keep the cuttings out of direct sunlight.

After two or three weeks, tugging slightly on a cutting will determine whether or not roots have started to develop. If they offer good resistance, the cuttings can be removed and put into separate pots with a good potting mixture.